Yesterday we had noted strong northerly winds, not a good sign. Round here strong northerly
winds almost invariably change to westerly winds. If there is a bushfire, the northerly
wind drives it in a line to the south. Then the westerly wind takes the line and converts
it to an area extending to the east.

Today I listened to the news at 7:00. Yes, indeed, there were bushfires in
Western Victoria,
fortunately some distance away. And once again they mentioned names of tiny little places
that say nothing to most
people: Naringal
East, Taroon,
Ayrford,
Dixie, Ecklin South, Naringal,
Garvoc,
Laang,
Nullawarre
North, Panmure,
Terang... They're so small that at the
time of writing Wikipedia only knows four of
them.

Wait a minute. Garvoc rings a bell. That's where Nele Koemle lives! Spent some time
pondering this matter when I heard a helicopter fly overhead. That could only be from
the CFA. No getting back
to sleep any more. Out to look at the Emergency Services Map. No fires in our area, but further west it didn't look good:

Later Yvonne got in contact with Nele (via Facebook, of course). She had taken her children with her
to Warrnambool, about 35 km away,
leaving her husband Pat behind to protect property, horses and dairy farm. She had heard
that the paddock by the churchyard was burning. She had had some horses there, and people
had seen horses running loose. And she had lost telephone contact with Pat. What a
situation!

Later things became clearer. No humans or animals injured, no damage to their property.
But the dairy farm of Pat's brother had been affected, some sheds destroyed, also their hay
supply. And—we think (the Emergency services are now too polite to present this
information)—the fire still hadn't been contained. Later the maps were updated to show the
extent of the fires, clearly showing the shape caused by the wind change:

Nele and Pat live outside that area, just north of the junction with Mcconnell's Road, to
the south-west of the western fire. In fact, it's not clear why they still refer to it as
the Garvoc-Laang Road fire, since it only barely touches the Garvoc-Laang Road. But things
still aren't over. Hopefully no further damage will occur.

The other thing that puzzles me: why there? The summer was neither particularly hot nor
particularly dry, and when we were there this time last year things had looked
pretty lush:

The bad news about bushfires continues to come in, not only from
Western Victoria, but also
from New South Wales,
coincidentally not far from where Chris Bahlo used to live,
near Bega. Round here we
only had the effects of the wind. This was
a Canna a couple of days ago:

The first was a Basil plant I bought at
ALDIon Thursday, and the second is
the Thyme plant that Mick threw out along
with the bathwater on Friday. But I had expected the thyme to be tougher. We'll see how it develops.

Chris Bahlo borrowed the SD Card
from my Olympus OM-D E-M1
Mark I on Saturday: she had the impression that her camera was very slow. I had
noticed in the past that even the slower Olympus cameras can benefit from faster
cards—Yvonne's E-PM2 was a case in point, so
I suggested she try a faster one.

But I needed the thing back, so over to pick it up today, in the process discussing the
problem with Chris. Whatever it was, it was an order of magnitude worse than just “a bit
slow”. After fighting my way through the menu (this is an E-M10 Mark II, and there
aren't as many buttons), managed to get it to take reliable 6½ photos a second, still a
little less than the claimed 8½, probably because of the slow shutter speed. But after
taking about 20 photos it took forever to write to the card, whereas it was done in a few
seconds with my card.

So: faster card? Went looking yet again, and once again I was amazed by how expensive the
fast cards are. Today the best price I could find was round $75. There's a question as to
whether that's really needed, but that's for Chris to answer. The real issue is that her
original speed problems were an order of magnitude worse than what we saw today.

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